Guitar recording for Black/death metal - Advice needed

[sigarni]

Hi guys. After lurking this forum as a guest for a few weeks I finally signed up and this is my first post. This is concerning guitar recording techniques, which is of course not a rare subject here, but many posts are quite specific and after scanning through some articles I just decided to jot down my own specific request for advice. All redirections to other threads concerning this topic are very helpful.

So the deal is that in the next few days I‘ll start tracking down the guitars for an EP for my band. We play extreme (black / death /whatever you wanna call it) metal in a similar vein as Behemoth, Hate, Belphegor etc. I‘ve been recording music as a hobby for a number of years and I believe I am qualified for recording descent sounding guitars, or so I hope at least, plus the money situation in Iceland doesn’t allow for expensive studio projects for extreme metal bands. The drums were handled by a more experienced engineer and the mixing and mastering will be left to him and / or other(s) with further accomplishments in this field.

Now that we have the back story, here is what I need advice about.
We plan to use a Vox vt100 for the guitars. It’s not a cabinet but a great sounding and brand new model, some kind of half and half digital + tube amp. We, the guitarists, both own a pair, each, of newish ESP (the real ones, not ltd) guitars in great conditions and we consider us quite accomplished instrumentalists in our field, so initial recording accuracies (if that makes sense) should not be a problem. My plan is to record with a single SM57 mic in a very sound-isolated (or chime free) surrounding. After some demoing, although not with the Vox but with a Pod, I found that recording only one rhythm guitar on each side (panned 100% to left and right) to be very tight and sounding very good, but still not sounding as wide and awesome in comparison to our “role-models” ( I know it sounds gay) newer albums. I realize that the chance of me producing something as big and epic as the productions on newer Behemoth and Hate albums is zero, but I believe comparing can at least not hurt.

So to sum up, the questions are:
Is it necessary for us to record two guitars each side, compared to just one?
What are some directions, if you know any, in guitar recording particularly to this field of metal?
Are more mics’ needed, other than just a single SM57 to obtain a descent sound?

Please note that I won’t be handling the mixing or mastering so the object at hand is to record the best sound without using internal digital EQ’s and the likes. Like I mentioned above I do realize that there is an enormous possibility that there exist many threads / articles on this subject so if someone just wants to say fuck off newbie, then please direct me towards useful threads while you do so.

Thanks in advance and this forum is awesome and really helpful. Don’t change that.
Sigurður Árni

 

[plague_rider]

“role-models”??
please elaborate, i'd like to see what help/information is offered that can help with recording this style of music

 

[decoys]

why not recording just the di's of your guitars and let them get reamped professionally? i'm sure you'll find guys here that can help you out with an apropriate guitar tone then.

 

[sigarni]

Plague rider:
Not sure what you meant, but by role-models I meant the bands we are influenced by and whose music ours is and can be likened to. (Not sure if you didn't know what I meant or you were just amazed at my choice of words by saying "Role-models")

Decoys:
I'm sure that's a great idea and I'd probably be certain about it if I fully knew what it means. I actually haven't properly gotten around trying this reamping thing out, due to a busy schedule at school etc. There's also a limited time we have to finish the guitars so I was hoping to be able to do it the old school half-analog way. But I'll try to get more acquainted with reamping as soon as I can.

 

[plague_rider]

sorry, i wasn't clear with that, i meant to ask who you regard as influences

 

[sigarni]

oh ok.

The most influential bands would include: Behemoth, Hate, Keep of Kalessin, Nile, Emperor and the likes.

Other influential bands are Sabbat, Secrets of the Moon, Mayhem, Darkthrone and others but those bands' sound production have very little to do with what we're aiming at for us.

You can check out a couple of songs at www.myspace.com/atrumiceland
but note that these recordings are rough mixes that I had nothing to do with, except performing guitars and vocals, that never got finished for one reason or another. So I had nothing to do with actually tracking them down and I believe that getting a better guitar sound would not be much of a problem.

 

[veronicafalls]

use impulses and D.I. the guitarsin a DAW. Impulses are a great way to track guitars. And if you have the D.I. you can always modify your sound later. your band is pretty cool, sounds like something I would listen to when studying. lol In the car I only listen to the bands joey sturgis recorded, I think I bought 15 or 16 itunes albums of at least bands he did.